English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
History
English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
Such is the man, a grand mixture of moral,
political, and intellectual incongruities."[117]
If the part which Brougham's position as attorney-general to Queen
Caroline obliged him to take at the memorable period of the "Bill of
Pains and Penalties" had not closed the door of professional advancement
against him, he had most effectually locked it against himself so long
as her husband lived by the intemperate and ill-judged language in which
he alluded to that event in the speech which he delivered at Edinburgh
on the 5th of April, 1825.[118] But Brougham was constantly on the watch
for its being opened, and on the very day when George the Fourth died,
that is to say on the 20th of June, 1830, he spoke in the House of
Commons in eulogistic terms of the new sovereign, praising him for
allowing the Speaker to take the oaths at an unusually early hour in
order to suit the convenience of members, a graceful act, which Mr.
Brougham declared he hailed as a happy omen of the commencement of an
auspicious reign. The astute K. C.'s object did not escape the
penetrating eye of HB, who forthwith represented him as _The Gheber
Worshipping the Rising Sun_, in whose smiling face we recognise the
unmistakable lineaments of William the Fourth. The sun proved not
unmindful of the attention; for, on the formation of Earl Grey's
ministry in 1830, Mr. Brougham was made Lord Chancellor, with the title
of Baron Brougham and Vaux. The appointment took the nation by surprise;
for although a consistent upholder of Whig principles, he had always
maintained a peculiar and independent position with his party, and was
expected to prove rather an embarrassment than otherwise. These
expectations were fully realized, and there can be no doubt that the
sentiments which Lord Brougham's bearing as Chancellor excited among his
colleagues and contemporaries, excluded him for the remainder of his
life from all official life and employment.
With all his wonderful powers, however, Lord Brougham could make, as
O'Connell asserted of him, as inconsiderate a speech as any man. One of
these speeches, which was delivered on the 14th of August, 1833, in a
debate on the bill for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies,
suggested to HB a happy subject. His lordship is reported to have said
that, "the object of the clause [then under discussion] was to make the
black, from the moment that he arrived on the shores of this country, a
free man in all respects: to make him eligible to sit in Parliament,
either in the House of Lords, if it should be his Majesty's pleasure to
give him a title to a seat, or in the other House if he should be
elected." HB, with his usual facility for seizing an idea, took his
lordship at his word, and forthwith elevated the emancipated "nigger" to
the woolsack, clothing him in the wig and gown of Lord Chancellor
Brougham, and giving him the features of the noble and learned lord
himself: this sketch bears the title of _A Select Specimen of the Black
Style_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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